SILENCE OF THE LAMBS
Every year around this time the cities of Pakistan go through a bizarre transformation. The streets which were full of all sorts of animals – goats, sheep, lambs, cows, camels, and more recently yaks, are now strangely empty. The cacophony of different sounds has been silenced as if a giant spaceship full of green men...
THE STATE & FORCED PHILANTHROPHY
In 1980, Dictator Zia-ul-Haque passed the Zakat and Ashar Ordinance of 1980 which mandates that 2.5 percent of all declared income shall be taxed by the State and placed into the Bait-ul-Maal. This made Pakistan the second Muslim country in the world after Saudi Arabia where Zakat is mandatory; the difference being that in Saudi...
THE STATE & FORCED PHILANTHROPHY
In 1980, Dictator Zia-ul-Haque passed the Zakat and Ashar Ordinance of 1980 which mandates that 2.5 percent of all declared income shall be taxed by the State and placed into the Bait-ul-Maal. This made Pakistan the second Muslim country in the world after Saudi Arabia where Zakat is mandatory; the difference being that in Saudi...
PROFITS IN THE NAME OF RELIGION
Since the beginning of time private enterprise has had one motive, and one motive alone – the pursuit of profit. With the advent of competition, entrepreneurs through the centuries have sought out innovative ways to position their products to differentiate them from the others. Today businesses engage the services of advertising companies, marketing companies, PR...
DAMNED IF YOU DO AND DAMNED IF YOU DON’T
General Pervaiz Musharraf and his team must be scratching their heads right about now and wondering why they’re getting so much flak after what is seen internationally as a successful operation at Lal Masjid. Civillian casualities were minimized and as Inzimam would say, “the bwouys played well by the Grace of Allah”. So why all...
30 Day Hibernation
According to Wikipedia, hibernation is “a state of regulated hypothermia, lasting several days or weeks, that allows animals to conserve energy during the winter. During hibernation animals slow their metabolism to a very low level, with body temperature and breathing rates lowered, gradually using up the body fat reserves stored during the warmer months. Some...
WANTED: A GENTLER AND COHERENT FOREIGN POLICY
In our fifty-eight years of existence, Pakistan has always found itself on the front-line of some ideological war or the other. Maybe the confusion on the question of identity propelled our leaders to try and build relationships with nations with whom we did not share neither identity nor causes. Or maybe it was the internal...
THE RELIGION COLUMN
In a country like Pakistan where the majority of the ever-growing population does not have access to clean drinking water it almost seems criminal for the MMA to agitate against the Government’s decision not to include a religion column in the new machine readable passports. Ever since General Musharraf held elections and the motley group...
